3.45 miles
locks and dam #1 hill
57 degrees
Wow! A beautiful spring morning. Sunny, low wind, birds. Favorite part of the run was hearing, then seeing, the geese under the ford bridge. Honking as they flew low then landing in their river, their feet skimming the water — what a beautiful sound that is — not sure how to describe the sound of a bird coming in for a landing.
Listened to the birds, no specific bird, just BIRDS!, as I ran south, then put in “Dear Evan Hansen” at the top of the hill and listened to that as I ran north.
Mostly my body felt strong and sore, especially the big toe on my right foot.
Mary Ruefle, “On Fear”
before the run
The second form of dread is the anticipatory dread of pain, either physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological, and that, folks, covers nine-tenths of the world’s surface.
Ruefle lists Julian of Norwich’s 4 forms of dread:
dread form 1 = emotion fear — your very first response to smell of smoke
dread form 3 = doubt or despair
dread form 4 = hold dread with which we face that we which we love the most
Dread. I like it better than the word fear because fear, like the unconscious emotion which is one of its forms, has only the word ear inside of it, telling an animal to listen, while dread has the word read inside of it, telling us to read carefully and find the dead, who are are also there.
For some reason, this word play reminded me of a delightful poem I read by Kelli Agodon Russell a few months ago:
Believing Anagrams/ Kelli Agodon Russell
—after being asked why I write so many poems about death and poetry
there’s real fun in funeral,
and in the pearly gates—the pages relate.
You know, i fall prey to poetry,
have hated death.
all my life,
literature has been my ritual tree—
Shakespeare with his hearse speak, Pablo Neruda, my adorable pun.
So when i write about death and poetry, it’s donated therapy
where i converse with
Emily Dickinson, my inky, misled icon.
and when my dream songs are demon’s rags,
i dust my manuscript in a manic spurt
hoping the reader will reread because i want the world
to pray for poets as we are only a story of paper.
This poem is from her collection, Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room. It seems fitting to read and post this poem on Emily Dickinsons death date — May 15, 1886. I love her anagram for Emily Dickinson: inky, misled icon
during the run
I thought about reciting Dickinson poems as I started running, but forgot about it before I even reached the river. Near the end of the run, while I listened to “Dear Evan Hansen,” I thought about fear and dread and wondered where worry fit in.
after the run
I’m slowly reading more of Ruefle’s “On Fear”:
She talks about the difference between emotions (instinct) and feelings (cognitive), and emergencies of feeling. She lists what other poets have said about fear, then lists her fears. And she returns to Julian of Norwich:
“Fear and dread are brothers,” says Julian of Norwich. As desire is wanting and fear is not-wanting.
After this mention of Norwich, Ruefle devotes several pages to Keats and his idea of negative capabilities. I’ll leave a discussion of that for another day, when I have time.
She ends with a reference to Emily Dickinson, which, like Russell’s poem seems fitting to include:
What has life taught me? I am much less afraid than I ever was in my youth–of everything. That is a fact. At the same time, I feel more afraid than ever. And the two, I can assure you, are not opposed but inextricably linked. I am more or less the same age Emily Dickinson was when she died. Here is what she thought: “Had we the first intimation of the Definition of Life, the calmest of us would be Lunatics!” The calm lunatic–now that is something to aspire to.
The passage from ED comes from a letter and also includes these wonderful lines:
There is a Dove in the Street and I own beautiful Mud – so I know Summer is coming. I was always attached to Mud, because of what it typifies – also, perhaps, a Child’s tie to primeval Pies.
Letter from Emily Dickinson to Mrs. JG Holland (about March 1877)
Two more things I found from an early (1862) letter from Dickinson to Higginson. The first fits with Ruefle’s discussion of fear and poets:
I had a terror-since September-I could tell to none-and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground-because I am afraid-
The second I’m including because I find it delightful:
You ask of my Companions Hills- Sir-and the Sundown-and a Dog-large as myself, that my Father bought me-They are better than Beings-because they know-but do not tell-and the noise in the Pool, at Noon – excels my Piano.